How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning

and evaluation stages?

Evaluation question 4- Louie Clark

BloggerIt is my second year using blogger for my a level media work. It is where all work once completed is posted online so that it is in one place and most people use it for this. Pros- Labels; I was new to this function of blogger but found it a useful way to organize my posts so that they were easier to navigate.Accommodates many different platforms; work can be shared from a lot of different sources using blogger, which allowed for more flexibility when adding posts.

Cons- Cannot take raw files; has to be shared from exterior online source if document, though it can use images straight from file which was useful when uploading graphic work.

Slideshare

The majority of my posts were documents shared from slideshare as one slide. It is the way I am posting my evaluation to my blog as well. Pros- Can upload powerpoint, prezi and word documents to blogger.Cons- Was not able to upload a couple of times due to site maintenance.

Photoshop

The creation of my ancillary products was done entirely through image manipulation on Photoshop cs6. As a tool for construction it worked well and I had already used it last year for my coursework so was fairly well equipped to use it again. I had some trouble adjusting each image to have the same brightness and contrast and colour levels as each time I would set them and reopen the sliders they would revert back to zero. But overall I felt I was able to use it well for the task at hand.

PremierePro

The editing software I used was premiere pro and it was my first time really getting to grips with it which meant progress at first was quite slow. Although it is considered quite simple as an editor it was my first time using software of this nature so I used youtube tutorials to try and learn what was possible using it. It was still a learning curve however, part of what hinders it is the simplicity, everything is linear and I found that to do something out of the ordinary took an online search and a lot of patience.

YouTube

Youtube was the platform I used to post my final cut and transition task online so it could be viewed by people and shared on my blog. It was also the way in which I learned most of my editing skills on premiere and audition when it came to sound editing. As a source of information it is subject to bias, misinformation and ‘rick rolling’ but I was able to use it to facilitate my work quite well. I did have trouble uploading my rough cut for my music video but that may have been a problem with premiere. I also used youtube to research other music videos which I then posted on my blog

dafont

I took countless screen grabs from dafont.com during the construction of my ancillary products. I selected fonts from the website that fit the house style of the products I was making.

I then added them to the photoshop document and manipulated them into my work. When planning my ancillary products dafont was one of the places I looked for possible fonts that would promote the song.

Adobe Audition

I used adobe audition to cut precisely parts of my audio track when editing, and to add face ins and fade outs. However I had never used this software before, and didn’t find much help online when trying to learn. A problem I had was applying a fading in effect in the middle of the track as opposed to the beginning or the end, which made it for me a first time user quite limited. I ended up adding key frames to the audio track on premiere and using those to simulate a fade in and a fade out, which made for a less precise edit.